5yo dd blaming God for everything. 'Why can't God just make it Friday so i can have Golden time today?'

[EweHaveGoatToBeSkiddinInSnow]

It's really irritating me. We're both Catholics (me not a practicing one, though) and dd attends a Catholic school.

These past few weeks, she's been going on about God and bombarding me with questions such as "Who made God?" "What was there before God?" "How can God be everywhere at the same time?"

I've answered as well as i could.

But now she's blaming God for every little thing. And it's these ones I'm struggling with.

"Why can't God just make it my birthday today?"

"Why can't God make me turn into a kitten instead of being a human?"

"Why can't God make me fly?"

"Why can't God make someone else have my cough?"

Etc etc etc. God is being blamed for such things 3-5 times a day in my house.

I've explained to her this morning about the Golden Time/Friday thing that it was humans who invented the idea of days and time etc, so it's nothing to do with God. But then she spun it around that God was the one who made humans and gave them their brains to think about naming the days in the first place.

Any ideas?

Our Parish Sister says she dreads the days the children are sent to ask her these questions!

I agree with the suggestion that what we want is not always what is best for us, or for those around us.

"What we want is not always what is best for us"

I'd say a starving person has a fair idea what would be best for them, only is seems quite often god disagrees. Could you explain how it's best for them to not have food or clean water?

Thistledew and headinhands, God has everything to do with reason and we can come to know God through reason and "common sense". in Catholic theology truth and reason are very important. The modern University as we know it today and the scientific method were both developments of Catholicism. Education has always been an expression of faith for Catholics. With live in a world and universe of natural laws and where we can gain knowledge and understanding through reason.

Headinhands, we live in a world where if humans chose to we could provide basic sustenance for everyone but we choose not to share our resources. Some people would prefer a God who was their own personal wish-granter deciding to ignore the miraculous and generous environment we live in by taking it for granted. Catholics also believe we bear a responsibility for all human beings as our brother and sisters and therefore have always had a "preferential option for the poor". Working to relieve poverty, suffering and lack of education. The right for people to organize themselves and unionize to gain their fair share of resources is also part of Catholic theology.

Catholic theology has always understood that one way in which God is revealed and can be known is through observing and experiencing the natural world and the human person.

I think the history of learning and education predates Catholicism by, oh, a few thousand years.

We may have the bare resources to feed everyone but other issues prevent that happening, issues that god knew about beforehand. It's the caged animals analogy again. Would it be moral to shove a load of animals into a cage knowing that some would suffer at the hands of the other animals?

If I put a mouse and a cat in a cage and then sat back and watched the mouse get killed, am I really in no way responsible? Who could look at me sitting there and not wonder what the hell is going on in my head? How ridiculous would it be for us to go 'oh what a bad cat' if we had orchestrated that situation?

I did not state that education started with Catholicism, my point is that reason and education are intrinsic to the faith and not incompatible. The modern university as we know it in the western world is a development of Catholicism.

The theory that the universe is expanding (otherwise known as The Big Bang) was first proposed by Georges Lemaitre a Belgian Catholic priest and professor of physics. Catholics are not afraid of exploring any kind of truth.

I do not find your analogy of a complex, diverse world to a prison as enlightening, I do not believe God is a watch-maker/prison warden who created, wound everything up (or locked it in a prison) then left. As Catholics we believe that in God "we live, and move and have our being".

As humans, suffering is a mystery to us because we believe we should somehow be able to live with no suffering - what makes us think that? What are we comparing to?

Why don't I want suffering? Same reason as you, because it hurts people. As for thinking its strange for someone to wish there was no suffering, I'm not the one who thinks such a place exists and that some of us are headed there. If you think the idea of a world with no suffering is silly then why don't you have a problem with the idea of heaven?

Your post suggested that we would not have education if it weren't for Catholicism which is a ridiculous notion. What about the pivotal part Islam has played in the development of the modern day university such as Al-Azhar?

My analogy still stands until you have any proof that god is not passive. All of the evidence shows that god is very much hands off, yet he created it knowing what would happen.

I don't believe we should be able to live without suffering but I would like us to use our knowledge to reduce suffering, as is being done with modern medicine. I don't have a belief that 'I shouldn't have to suffer' but I do find suffering upsetting for me and for anyone. It's empathy and it makes me want people to have what they need and to have their human rights met.

Well, why can't he? Why are only things that are important my middle class, middle aged, white men deemed as important by the catholic god?

You need to explain to your five year old that the god she has learned about doesn't think that what she wants is important or interesting, but don't be surprised if she carries on questioning because no child is born acceptingly relious.

Headinhands you are claiming I have said things that I have not. I have not said at any time that education or universities only came from Catholicism. My point is that Cathollicism is not incompatible with reason or education which is implied from posters in this thread.

Knowledge and models of education have naturally spread throughout the world throughout history. I never implied otherwise. My point is that rather than an irrational faith which thrives on ignorance Catholicism supports and promotes education and many of the oldest universities in the western world were founded by Catholics. Practicing Catholics continue to push the boundaries of knowledge in many fields including science.

To clarify; just because I say Catholics are is not to imply others are not. I am only explaining that Catholics are not afraid of reasoning or education.

Neither did I say that to want to avoid suffering was strange.

If god isn't a magician, how did he create the world in seven days?

If god can't just take a cough away, why do people pray for sick relatives?

If she can't always have anything she wants, what's the point in prayer?

If you can't answer any of her questions, why do you get to pick her religion for her?

The majority of Catholics are not white, male or middle class.

There are many forms of prayer. Only one kind is requesting from God which is prayer of petition.

The majority of the Catholics in charge are white, middle aged, middle class, and male.

But how does a prayer of petition work for cancer if it won't work for a child's cough?

Why do middle class white people get to be warm, fat and leisurely, and poor black people along the equator get to starve and die of aids?

Why is the catholic god not fair? Why do Catholics choose to worship a god that isn't fair, even handed, and loving to ALL his children?

If I treated a child the way "god" treats Africans, I'd be in jail. Why is it ok for "god" to do it.

Honeyandrum, when you said 'what are we comparing it to' it implied you didn't understand how a person of no faith could want a irradiate suffering. It's not rocket science is it. It's basic empathy. I don't need to see someone get stabbed to not want them to be stabbed again. Are you suggesting that god has put this desire in us, this desire to eradicate suffering? Why would god give us something he obviously doesn't have himself?

I'm sorry if I worded that badly, I meant it as a rhetorical question; in that we all want to avoid suffering.

Many Africans are Catholic (and most Africans are deists) and I think they would disagree with your assessment that God does not love or care for them.

Yes, why is it that a tiny minority of the world's population is living in luxury comapred to the rest? Is that God's fault?

If I created an animal sanctuary with bonobo chimps, knowing that bonobo chimps will sometimes share food, is it ok for me to let some of them starve because others are hoarding? Is it ok for me to provide comfortable sleeping quarters for 75% of the bonobos and not the others?

Is it the bonobo chimps fault when some of them are ill? Hungry? Cold?

Or, as the alleged head of a beautiful world of my creation, is it mine?

Maybe you should create a sanctuary for Bobo chimps and try out your experiment?

You just need to create some Bobo chimps to start off.

The Catholic church does not teach a simplistic creationism, evolution for example in not incompatible with Catholic theology. On the other hand current theories put the creation of the universe in minute slices of time (particles of a second) and seven days would be an extravagantly leisurely time frame.

They might say that god loves them but that doesn't mean he does or that he even exists. I would want evidence that he loved them. There is none.

I can't make bonobo chimps, I've never even seen a god let alone a god that makes stuff.

God knew how it would pan out. And at the same time he props up the injustice. For example he heals more people who have access to modern medicine than those who don't.

That's because God gave us reason and creativity and expects us to use them.